Archive for the ‘Yung Life’ tag

Knoxville electro-pop indie darlings the Royal Bangs will play a rare hometown show on Friday, Sept. 21, at The Ciderhouse (112 Ramsey St. in Knoxville’s Warehouse District, adjacent to The Valarium; Marina Orchestra opens the show), and we caught up via email with singer/instrumental wizard Ryan Schaefer to get the skinny on what’s happening with the guys.

The band plans on debuting a “bunch of new material” at the Ciderhouse show, Schaefer writes, from the band’s forthcoming new album. Although it’s untitled right now and a firm release date has yet to be locked in, it’s a safe bet given the band’s last two nationally distributed releases — 2009’s “Let It Beep” and last year’s “Flux Outside” (released on the Glassnote label) — a lot of fans in East Tennessee and beyond are waiting on pins and needles for a new record.

It’s “almost finished, just getting it mastered now,” Schaefer writes. “We recorded it in Nashville with our friend Patrick Carney (of The Black Keys and founder of the Audio Eagle record label, which released “Let It Beep”) producing and Roger Moutenot engineering. It was really fun to make. Dylan Dawkins (formerly of up-and-coming fuzz-pop band Yung Life and the side project Persona La Ave) plays bass for us now, so we could actually track most of it live, which was kind of new for us. Usually we figure everything out in the studio, but this time we had it more or less put together before we got there, and the songs can breathe a little bit more because we’re playing them together.”

The band’s other two members include guitarist Sam Stratton and drummer/percussionist Chris Rusk. The Sept. 21 show starts at 10 p.m., and admission is $10; it’s a presentation of that most awesome Old City indie-rock club The Pilot Light.